Animated film

What is – or better: what productively can be framed as animation? Here the concept of animation is as well a driving force as it is itself very much in question.
Conceptually and methodologically we aim to reformulate a commonly rather technical understanding of animation (understood exclusively as a sub-genre of film, realised by a canonic, even though expanding body of defined techniques which can be „taught“ to the students) towards an expanded animation. ‚Expanded‘ means that animation is understood primarily as a field of transmedial artistic practices which can encompass means from drawing to writing to performance or video work, as well as cooking or urbanistic research. Therefore our students such as our collaborators in and outside the school have various backgrounds and work within various fields. In the process of sharing works within the department, ‚animation‘ serves as a counterpoint and field of operations/references in relation to which an approach can be (re)framed. The term does not fulfill a pre-existing definition, but formulates every time anew what animation can be.
This has a huge impact on the teaching/learning methodologies: it is not that the techniques make up a body of knowledge that is passed on to the students. But the work consists – practically from the beginning in BAC01 on, and more and more intensified towards BAC03 and MA – in identifying together the concepts, concerns and related demands of what is slowly shaping as each student’s project. Those are explored in close discussion with the teachers, but also in feedback-constellations with other students, that transgress the borders between Bachelor-, Master- and Phd-students, and namely between student- and teacher-position, towards an open form of collaboration. Such primarily multi-individual path is accompanied by collective propositions: regular workshops and interventions by external visiting artists allow for perspectives and practical experiences within different “worlds” of developed animation or animation-related practices. Other, not obligatory formats further productively blur the borders of a pedagogical framework, of what is considered to happen in school: open screenings and regular collective work-dinners (“colloquia”) hosted in different private apartments, or occasionally works ‚on site’ as factual displacements – such as for example a past workshop in Tirana in collaboration with an Albanian urbanist university-faculty.
So what is animation? We address this question not only as a work-internal and/or technical concern, but eminently as a shifting concept, that has to be shaped through and within the very frame of a shared working space – In the collective decision and realization of its aesthetical, pedagogical and political distinctions.
[A selection of some traces of student works realized in the department can be discovered here: https://vimeo.com/channels/experimentalanimationerg ]

Presentations, analyses and collective discussions around examples taken from animated film and other subjects related to animation (performance, architecture, visual arts, etc.) that show a singular approach of "image by image” cinema.
Beyond practical features (the breaking down of movement, layout, drawings, animation, rhythm, division, the relationship with soundtrack, etc.), this course aims at exploiting its potential in order to accompany a singular content and to experiment with various animation techniques.

Presentations, analyses and collective discussions around examples from animated film and other subjects related to animation (such as performance, architecture and visual arts) that show a singular approach of "image by image” cinema.
The workshop aims at learning the practical processes of animation by using diverse approaches and techniques.
The objective is to encourage students to discover the numerous animation techniques and the meaning that they convey.

The animation course in Masters aims at:
Exploiting all animated film resources to support the students’ personal project/practice (creation of a film, of a sequence inserted in a multimedia project, of a structure based on a protocol/animation system or within an installation, etc.).
The implementation of a creative process (proficiency in all the parameters at stake).
Mastering the theoretical contents that support the personal project (finding an appropriate language, contextualizing, arguing, etc.).
Developing and creating a work-sharing platform.